Trading Timepieces
by sagebrush-soap-opera
Summary: A bunch of drunken Shinsengumi rookies cast a surprisingly successful piece of magic that sends Bakumatsu!Saitou and Himura to the Meiji era while yanking Meiji!Saitou and Kenshin back to their pasts. Now how to get home?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I totally and completely do not own this stuff. This time, I don't even really own the idea, because **SiriusFan13** and **Shirou Shinjin**‏ were the inspiration for that. Go check them out.

Note: Okay, so this is another departure from Revolution. I hang my head in shame. But I got prodded, and I was intrigued again, and I had the outline, and I couldn't sleep anyway, and, and, and… Well. Maybe I'll be a better juggler this time around. Somehow, this took something like a fifth of the time to write than the last chapter of Revolution. Don't know what's up with that.

* * *

Chapter One

While not necessarily young, the night was nevertheless not old enough to warrant quite the level of drunkenness that could be found in the lower rooms of the novice barracks in the Shinsengumi headquarters. With strict orders not to leave the premises, the newest batch of Shinsengumi rookies had turned to the storeroom for their supply, and the kitchen maids still awake at that hour hadn't seen fit to refuse their requests.

Kuroda Hiro, the unofficial leader of the group, choked back a hiccup and waved his cup for a refill, sloshing the contents over the sides before he realized he didn't need a refill. "To Hijikata-san!" he bellowed, "may he kill a thousand Shishi scum!"

The others raised their own cups, slightly less enthusiastic at this, Kuroda's third such outburst in an hour. They turned back to the dice game after pouring more sake around the circle. Though no one could actually count the pips anymore—and one of the dice had run off at some point prior in the evening—there was a great deal at stake in this game.

"Evens, two fours," Murata Junpei called, watching the die spin in the air before thudding softly onto the tatami.

His cousin patted his shoulder in consolation. "Tough breaks, Jun-kun." He shook his head morosely. "Odds, two threes."

"Two threes is evens." Murata made an attempt to stand as he delivered his argument, but settled for lurching to one side.

"There's not two of them!"

Nakata Seijun, on the opposite side of the circle, pointed at the die, and the others followed his finger. "Sure there are. See, lined up side by side."

Kuroda scoffed. "That's a six."

"What's that?" Murata shook his head. "Then we're short one. Where'd it go?"

"Doesn't matter," Kuroda said. "You lost. Tale or trial."

Murata sighed, and downed the contents of his cup. "My sister once had a lover," he started, having decided to tell a tale rather than undergo a trial. "They were seeing each other every night at a shrine, and he said he'd marry her." Someone poured more sake into his cup, and he took a gulp before going on. "So he ran off, yeah?"

"And didn't marry her?"

He shook his head. "Bastard didn't even say goodbye. So my sister, she had some of his hair in a little locket. She put a curse on him, made him disappear for good."

There was silence in the room for the first time since sundown. Finally, a lonely hiccup broke the tension, and the men burst out into laughter, pounding each other's backs and thumping their hands on the tatami.

"Did it work?" Kuroda asked.

Murata shrugged. "He was already gone. How should I know?"

From his place at Kuroda's left, Sakamoto Taku reached out to pick up the die and cup for his turn. "Maybe we should curse Battousai," he said, shaking the die around in the cup. "There's only one of these, right?"

Murata nodded.

"Odds, one six," Sakamoto called.

"That's even."

"What?"

Kuroda rolled his eyes and pointed at the die, showing a single pip. "Doesn't matter. Tale or trial?"

Sakamoto thought about it for a minute, and then shrugged. "Trial."

A second silence stretched out across the room. No one had chosen a trial since the game had started, and by now most of the men had realized they were too drunk to really pass a trial anyway. Everyone looked around the circle at the others, until finally all the eyes settled on Murata. As the previous roller, he got to choose a trial or reject a tale that wasn't juicy enough.

"… Let's curse the Battousai." Murata looked into his cup and found it empty, but didn't reach out to refill it. "I still know the words."

Nakata picked at the tatami nervously. "You want Sakamoto-kun to cut the Battousai's hair?" They might have the bravado necessary to join the Shinsengumi, but none of them were capable of that feat sober, and it didn't seem like a very fair trial when drunk.

Kuroda stroked his chin, as he thought. "Okita-san has that souvenir from the time he almost had the Battousai's head. He keeps it on display." He looked around the room at his fellow swordsmen's blank stares. "He braided it. It's the little red thing on his wall. Looks like a string."

"That's it, then," Murata decided. "Sakamoto-kun will get that souvenir for his trial, and bring it here."

* * *

Himura Kenshin sometimes regretted his decision to step out of the shadows. Not that he wished he was assassinating people again. Nothing like that. But when no one really knew about him, his assignments were over quicker and involved less running up and down alleys with pursuing Shinsengumi squads calling for his head. He hadn't gotten a good look at this squad before taking off, but from the ki, he guessed it was Okita's squad tonight. That was good. Okita ran out of breath sooner than Saitou did.

He rounded another corner and saw the tail end of the squad chasing him stop in confusion. It gave him the time he needed to cut through them and keep going. Sometimes tracking back was beneficial. He took the opportunity to leap to the rooftops unobserved. The longer he could keep that little secret from his enemies, the less likely those enemies were to start looking _up_ when hunting him.

Himura stepped back from the edge as the closer pursuers in the squad ran up to the intersection. He'd need to stay put for a few minutes, then make his way back to that shrine to be sure his replacement had gotten his chance at Dainichi Keisuke. Himura was fairly certain he'd caused enough of a distraction to allow "the other one" to do the job unseen, but Katsura-san had asked him to double check.

"Well, damn," Okita panted. He kicked at a crate irritably, his usually smiling face holding a grimace instead. "And you've checked all the other alleys?" he asked. At his subordinate's nod, Okita sighed, putting a hand over his mouth when the sigh turned into a cough. "Fine. We'll split up. You four, fan out west of here. The rest will join me searching east. We give it an hour, and then go back."

Once his breath was caught, Okita looked at the two who were staying with him, and then chuckled. "I hope Saitou's having more luck tonight. Let's go."

When they'd been gone for five minutes, Himura rolled his shoulders back and planned his route to the shrine. He'd stay mostly above street level to avoid both this squad and Saitou's, but there was a large portion of his path that was more or less without cover or buildings, and he debated between the small handful of alleys that would be useful for transitioning back to the ground.

Almost before he'd chosen, he started moving in that direction, smiling grimly when he overheard Okita's west team grumbling about demons who disappeared between the cracks of the cobblestone street. If it were as simple as that, far fewer people would have had to die on his sword. Fewer people he'd have to find some way to atone for when this was over. Would that he _could_ vanish so easily.

Satisfied he'd cleared the patrols and that the alley below was suitably empty, Himura carefully eliminated every shred of his ki, tucking it all in as tightly as he could as he surveyed the street one last time. Having dropped his pursuit, it wouldn't do to attract a replacement squad, and Saitou he knew had an uncanny ability to detect him from a distance. He offered up a brief thanks to whatever kami would still listen to him that Okita had alerted him to Saitou's presence on the streets tonight, and leapt down.

His sudden presence wouldn't have been noticeable to even a swordsman on alert, and he'd spent enough time checking the alley to be sure it was vacant, so when a cat hissed and ran out from a nook between two buildings and darted across the cobblestone with a clatter of claws, Himura tensed, spun, and drew his sword in the closest he'd come to panic since Otsu.

* * *

Saitou Hajime scowled at the moon and ducked back into the darkness of the alley he was currently sheltering in. His contact was now three hours late, and there were no signs of a struggle or a messenger bearing an apology. He fingered the hilt of his katana in irritation, and debated the possibility of calling it a night. No. He'd drawn the least enviable assignment for the night while Okita had drawn the most, but that was no excuse for failing to wait until dawn if he had to.

And there was a positive side to the whole affair, after all. Dressed in this dark green gi and brown hakama, and without a squad of noisy, ki-challenged distractions, he was free to enjoy the quiet of the night. And though his contact and shown no signs of arriving in this alley or anywhere near it, the assignment as such didn't prevent him from searching the area. For his contact, of course. He might not care about the recent increase in shrine vandalism that had sparked this assignment, but he wasn't about to let himself get distracted by the much more appealing prospect of hunting down the Battousai. Though, naturally, if he happened to stumble upon the hitokiri in his search for Dainichi Keisuke… Well.

He took in a deep breath and smothered his ki. If he stumbled near the Battousai on this perfectly legitimate search of the area, he wanted a chance to actually engage the slippery little killer. The Battousai had an unfortunate tendency to vanish as soon as he was spotted, and any edge Saitou could gain in keeping the hitokiri in one place long enough to cross swords was an edge Saitou welcomed. Though, he reminded himself, this was actually more a general scouting in search of an expected contact.

A brief consideration Dainichi's likely route to their meeting place sent Saitou off into the alleys toward the nearest shrine. It was a good start, anyway. He ghosted across the street, keeping his ki carefully reined to avoid detection as he slipped from shadow to shadow. It was a deserted part of town at that time of night, and the silence was oppressive. He was just passing the mouth of a particularly dark and derelict alley when what sounded like a cat hissing startled him and he spun around, drawing his sword.

And found himself face to face with an equally startled Battousai.

Saitou grinned. "Tonight isn't turning out so badly after all," he said, preparing a gatotsu. That fool Dainichi could wait.

The distance between them vanished in an instant as both combatants darted forward, the cat forgotten in the resulting clash of blades. Sensing that his opponent was searching for an opening to escape, Saitou revised his attacks to require more parrying than dodging. From the few fights with this man that he'd managed to drag out, he knew that if he could keep the Battousai engaged past five or so minutes, the hitokiri would cease to look for an out and devote his whole attention to ending the fight with a fatality instead of a draw.

By the time they'd both started to breathe hard, their fight had migrated several streets over and done considerable damage to the surrounding properties. They crouched across from each other with no more than five feet between them while each struggled to be the first to catch his breath. As though anticipating each other's next move, each leapt forward, Saitou with another gatotsu and Himura with his signature stance.

Mid-strike, there was a loud ***_pop_*** and the alley was, for a few seconds, empty.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I totally and completely do not own this stuff. This time, I don't even really own the idea, because SiriusFan13 and Shirou Shinjin‏ were the inspiration for that. Go check them out.

* * *

Chapter Two:

"Man," Sanosuke said, stretching his arms up as he walked, "it's been forever since we had a vacation." He shook his shoulders as his arms fell, and shoved an elbow into Kenshin's side. "Right, buddy?"

Kenshin smiled up at him and shrugged. "It _has _been a long time, that it has." He looked forward, toward the front of their little cluster, where Megumi was pointing out the local plant life to Kaoru. The doctor had already harvested several pouches worth of various medicinal herbs, and Kaoru seemed too interested to reign in her pupil, who crashed around in the vegetation on the lookout for snakes.

The last time he'd taken this road… Kenshin shook his head. It had been a while. Over nine years. At that point he'd still been unsure of himself, had still been learning to adjust the force of his blows so that they crushed a man's ribs without destroying the heart and lungs beneath. As much as he'd depended on them in Kyoto, his instincts had been a serious drawback after Toba Fushimi.

"Got one!"

They all stopped, looking toward the source of the exclamation to see Yahiko holding up a little green snake by the tail. The reptile curled back on itself, twisting its head upward toward the fingers that pinched its tail, and Yahiko dropped the snake with a yelp before dancing back to the road in a panic.

Kaoru met him with a hand on her hips. "Yahiko," she scolded with a smile. "You were supposed to keep watch for them, not pick them up."

Kenshin watched the group argue. Megumi murmured a warning about venom while Sano mussed Yahiko's hair and Kaoru continued to shake her finger. Things had been very different the last time, indeed. If he'd been told that he would travel this road into Aizu again surrounded by friends who cared for him even while they knew who he really was, he'd have scoffed. And if someone had said these same people would stand by him even after he left them for Kyoto…

But here they were. All of them. Taking what Kaoru had decreed was a much needed and deserved vacation. With Gensai-sensei watching the dojo and the aftermath of Shishio's defeat cleared up, there'd been no need to schedule a train ride or boat tickets. They were taking the scenic route for as long as they cared and, watching Yahiko hold his hands wide apart to show the much-exaggerated length of the snake, Kenshin had to admit it was nice to wander with friends.

"Something on your mind, Kenshin?" Sano slung an arm over his shoulders and dragged him along after the rest of the group, who were still debating the size of the snake Yahiko had caught.

"Aa," he agreed. "This one was just thinking how much more enjoyable it is to travel with people one cares about."

Kaoru looked back at him and smiled, her cheeks flushed from what he assumed was exertion. "Ne, we should be at the spot soon, Kenshin, right?" She laughed at something Megumi said and turned to reply.

Kenshin looked out into the forest to their left. They would indeed be there soon. It was a breathtaking view as he recalled, just like the local had said in town that morning. It was also a view he'd rather pass up. There had been seven of them waiting to ambush him then, and even with the sakabatou he'd almost done more damage than was survivable. "Sano, why don't you all go ahead and see the view over the side," Kenshin suggested softly. "This one can wait for you at the shrine around the bend."

The fighter looked down with a bit of concern. "Everything all right?"

He nodded. "This one had… an encounter here, long ago. It's a very pretty area, but…"

"Sure," Sano said. It wasn't the first time on this trip that Kenshin had been reluctant to see a particular area, and he doubted it'd be the last. "Just don't go wandering off or anything." He held up a still-bandaged fist. "I'll find you, you know."

Kenshin smiled, knowing that the warning was in jest but the sentiment sincere. "Don't let Kaoru-dono worry, okay?"

Sano shooed him off.

* * *

Saitou waved the incense gently to put out the flame, and watched the smoke rise in a twisted column from the glowing tip. Why Tokio insisted he do this every year was beyond him, but in the interests of continued marital harmony he figured a yearly journey to her favorite hometown shrine was a little enough nuisance to bear.

This was, however, the first such trip he'd made alone, since she was home caring for the little adopted whelp from Shingetsu. For all his determination to live well for his brother's memory, the boy was a sickly thing of late, and the last month or so had been trying for both Tokio and himself. Of course, Saitou would never let on that he was worried about the boy. It wouldn't do for anyone to think he was sentimental. It was just that such coughing reminded him of other things…

Saitou had tried to delay his vacation until the boy was well enough to travel, but Tokio would have none of it. And so he found himself lighting the incense in her place and sheathing the unlit end in the sand of the raised incense box, just another pin in an already crowded cushion. He glanced around at the clusters of people visiting the shrine that afternoon, each group largely ignoring the others. Families, mostly. He would have liked, perhaps, to have brought his own.

A scuff of zori on cobblestone and the pressure of a familiar ki made him suddenly glad that Tokio and the boy weren't here, and he turned his head to acknowledge the ridiculously dressed former hitokiri approaching him. It was time, he supposed, to exchange unpleasantries. That was what one did on meeting old allies, after all. And though it rankled on some inner level, the Battousai was an ally now.

"Saitou," Kenshin said with a surprised nod. "This one hadn't expected to find you here, he most certainly did not."

"Battousai," he muttered, turning back to his incense. That was, he decided, what bothered him about the Battousai now. It wasn't the oath not to kill, though that was as preposterous as his gi. It was all the '_this one_'s and '_that it is_'s sprinkled in his speech. He knew the man was capable of speaking normally. He'd done it during the Bakumatsu, and recently, too, when he forgot the role he was performing. Saitou watched from the corner of his eye as the shorter man moved his lips in a prayer and then clapped his hands.

"So why _are_ you here, Saitou?" Kenshin looked around at the other shrine-goers for a moment. They avoided his gaze and studiously kept to themselves. "It seems somewhat unlike you."

Taking his eyes off the smoke, Saitou smirked down at his former rival. "I'd ask you the same," he started, "but then I know how much you love to atone, so it really shouldn't surprise me that the Battousai likes to sample shrines on his road trips."

At the jibe, the man's eyes narrowed to the shape he remembered seeing over crossed sword blades time and again after the Kyoto fire, and Saitou felt his smirk grow. He was about to follow up with another comment in a similarly nasty vein, when there was a loud *_**pop**_* and the space where the two had been standing was, for a few seconds, empty.

* * *

"Did it work?" Kuroda asked, looking at Murata.

They'd cleared the room the best they could, shoving the trays and empty sake bottles to the corners to make enough space in the room's center. Murata's jumbled incantations followed by wavering hand motions had led to a surprisingly silent outcome. The little red scrap on the tatami had not so much as twitched, and while none of the men could say what exactly they'd been expecting, 'nothing' hadn't been it.

Murata blinked owlishly at the hair and shrugged. "I guess we'll wait and see. If the Battousai shows up again, we'll know it didn't."

"Well what happened when your sister did this?"

"'Bout the same thing, actually," he admitted. "It was windy out, though, so the hair moved."

The men spent several minutes watching Okita's souvenir, waiting for the tiniest of movements to indicate success. Gradually, as the hair failed to catch fire, inch across the tatami, or tie itself in a knot, their eyes shifted from the hair to each other. The room was silent, and there was no wind outside that they could hear.

Finally, Sakamoto broke the quiet. "Well, I guess it's your turn again, Kuroda-kun. If you lose you have to pin the Battousai back onto Okita-san's wall."

Kuroda nodded in a surprisingly sober fashion, and fumbled behind himself for the dice cup. "How many of these are there, again?"

* * *

In the brief and sudden absence of two bitter allies from the shrine near Aizu, an uneasy murmur rose up from the families scattered about offering prayers. It had not yet grown to a panic, though panic was possibly on its way.

"Where'd they go?"

"They were ghosts!"

"But they had feet."

"R-red hair… a cross—"

A wife shushed her husband and placed a protective hand on her son's shoulder. A daughter looked up at her father and tried to pull him toward the incense box to investigate. A young couple exchanged worried glances and backed toward the arches to leave before things became even stranger.

A second loud *_**pop**_* was immediately followed by the sound of steel on steel as a pair of katanas clashed against one another, their wielders each struggling breathlessly to push through the other's defense. Far too absorbed in the duel to notice anything beyond their opponent's eyes, and certainly not something as impossible as a complete change of scenery, the combatants broke free of the locked position and lunged forward again, moving so swiftly their forms seemed to blur.

And panic descended on the shrine. The incense box was crushed by the force of the attacks, its timbers splintered by sword edges and the embers falling to the cobblestones below to be ground into the cracks under the swordsmen's feet. The uneasy murmur rose in pitch and volume, becoming a chorus of screams as shrine-goers attempted to flee and succeeded only in getting in each other's way.

It was the noise that finally ended the duel. Each swordsman froze in horror of this large and unexpected audience. Then the rest of the surroundings sank in and the horror was joined by dazed confusion. The shorter one recovered first and bolted for the underbrush edging the shrine, leaping over a railed fountain as though it were a child's toy left in a garden path. The taller one gave a shout and followed, fury warring with unease on his face as he darted after his opponent, not bothering to avoid the fountain, but instead knocking the railing away as he crashed through the water and out of sight.

* * *

"Whoa. This sure is cool," Yahiko said, standing a touch too close to the edge for Kaoru's comfort. "Too bad Kenshin didn't stick around for it."

Sano shrugged. "You know how he gets sometimes. Anyway, he said he'd wait up ahead. You can tell him what he missed."

The road they'd been traveling had stayed largely in the forest until now, shrouded on each side by thick underbrush and vine-draped trees. Occasionally, they'd caught glimpses of the mountains through the trees, but those flickers hadn't prepared them for this. The entire valley unfolded below them, the greenery creased to hug the rising rock faces and a small pool nestled in the lowest part.

Kauro sighed, and was about to mention how much she wished she could have shared the view with Kenshin, when Yahiko yelled a nonsense phrase about rice balls out over the valley and stood back, expectantly. In a moment, the words returned, even more garbled than they'd started. Kaoru smiled and Megumi's tittering laughter followed Yahiko's nonsense across the valley.

Soon, they were all yelling and carrying on, which is why it took them a moment to realize what was happening when a *_**pop**_* reverberated back to them, louder than their own calls, followed shortly by a second *_**pop**_* and the shrieks of a dozen terror-stricken civilians. The group exchanged a brief glance and took off running down the road, all thoughts of the view eclipsed by the knowledge that something awful had happened at the shrine, and Kenshin was likely in the thick of it.


End file.
